Guild Wars 2

Are you saying this build is for everywhere like WvW, PvE? Because that’s pretty bad in PvE. Bad gear, bad trait.

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

I’m using Ascended Sinister on a condi thief and it works great on anything up to large scale bosses where my conditions can be over-written by others. I still get full credit for kills, even on EoTM champions.

As for WvW roaming? Hehehehe…. I’ve been having a ton of fun with that.

Ya but there is a difference between you feeling it work great and it being greatly effective. Sinister will be a great set of stats in Solo situation, but when you reach 4-5 ppl its all about luck. Remember that if you have a good condition build you probably don’t see any difference in your dps in a group. Since you have the highest condition dmg its you that crush other people’s condition, not the other way around. So everything looks great on your side, but not that nice for other ppl, even zerker build can do 500-1000 dps that you remove.

In the end it doesn’t matter much. If you do mostly open world pve, solo pve and wvw roaming, then Sinister is excellent. Its when you go into dungeon and fractal that this can be a bit more problematic.

Since OP seem to just have enough for 1 set of ascended gear, he should be sure of which one he will get the most out of depending on what he prefer and where he play the most. Its bad if he do a zerker ascended armor and don’t like it, but its as bad if he do a sinister gear and start to enjoy dungeon where sinister is not a good choice.

Paffus Piffus.9430:

Thanks for link but I don’t want a cookie cutter zerk build I am using soldiers stats so wondered if there is anything essential im missing.

Nobody is min-maxing a build for soldier gear, there is not point in doing that, so use whatever you want, it aint gonna be strong anyway, but it will work and if you are happy playing it then good for you.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Any Ranged weapon in this game will stay inferior to any melee weapon in this game..

Change ’’Any’’ for ’’most’’ and you are right. Staff Ele is the second best dps in the game, sceptre Guardian have higher dps against big slow boss like Lupi, nades are the biggest dps kit for engineer, etc. Most ranged weapons in this game will have inferior dps to melee weapons in this game, but there is clear exception.

Neural.1824:

Ok. I am completely confused now. I had traits at 6/4/0/4/0, with the trait items set at anything that would increase burning duration or similar.

Why did it make such a huge difference when I switched to the 6/6/2/0/0 V,VII,XI/VI,X,XII/VI ?

I mean, the difference is HUGE (to me). I was using scepter dagger, so switching to d/d wasn’t that much of a change, but …why is such a simple change doing so much better?

The difference is huge because of damage multiplier. These 10% there and there that you added in your build are really powerful and are one of the reason why in PvE, condition build are not that good. They don’t add up, they multiply together, getting stronger and stronger as you add more of them. That’s the strength of the elementalist since he have access to so many of them at the same time.

Go through different guides on the subject because for now you are all over the place. Your trait is better, but don’t fit with your weapons. You also don’t use the weapons in the right place. Scepter/Dagger is mostly use for stacking might in PvE and every time you spend on them while doing only dmg and not stacking might is not a good idea. Ppl using scepter/dagger and better scepter/focus also use the Lightning Hammer as their main source of dps. If you want a weapon that can do good dmg by itself Staff would be top, while Dagger/Focus is also a popular setup for more survivability in hard content.

Start by figuring out what Weapons you prefer to use between D/F, Staff, S/F or S/D.

You can buy the recipe on the TP for between 1 and 4 gold each and you can buy the recipe for the insignias in Silverwaste. Exotic will cost you 20 silver + 400 Bandi Crest and Ascended for 20 silver + 600 Bandit Crest.

Keep in mind that sinister could is great mostly for Solo PvE. It’s a huge investment for a stats that is not that great in most PvE group content. You can still do your ascended gear if you want, its just an head up.

klemen.8439:

To answer your question, let’s take a sample PUG meta group:
1 Guardian, 1/2 Elementalist, 2/3 Warriors – this is what I call a standard group.

I try, but it really hard to take you seriously after this line in particular lol.

Ya order them by the TP. It will take a long time, but won’t cost much for all the green and blue. Rare will be an issue because a couple are expensive. After there is also the exclusive dye from event and gem store. Those cost A LOT of gold since they were time limited.

Lindbur.2537:

There aren’t any ghost slaying potions, sadly.

Yes there is one. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Extended_Potion_of_Ghost_Slaying

But you only have the extended version and it’s so freaking expensive that nobody ever use them.

MakeTheGOD.2058:

Do these sigils stack dmg? Can i deal 20% more dps in ac now?

Yes you can.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

It should be noted that all the above information is for 100% power builds.

Condition builds are multiple tiers lower DPS and are not viable at all in PvE in any situation. Condition builds are fairly useful in PvP, but much less so than they were a year ago.

The problem is mostly that condition DPS is capped at 60% of top tier DPS with it being physically impossible to improve. It also suffers from poor gear scaling, and conditions being overwritten by power builds.

For example, upgrading from full exotic gear to full ascended gear for a zerker player offers a ~21% dmg increase. Doing the same for a rabid geared player offers a 5% dmg increase.

To be fair, condition build are viable in 2 situations in PVE that I know of. A lot of good solo dungeon build were published after the release of sinister stats and you still need them against husk (like with the Triple Wurm).

Lazze.9870:

monepipi.5160:

And to the OP: Ranger sucks balls at dungeon PVE

If being second best at bringing a flat buff to your party’s dps alongside good personal damage, among other things, suck balls, then I guess it does.

Except you’re wrong because you can easiliy bring a contributing ranger for speedruns, even record runs.

Don’t get me wrong, i agree with you. Ranger has been buffed so even if they were able to do a decent job before, they can do a great job now. But they are in the same situation as the Engineer. Its on the TOP 4 dps, but still too low compare to thief/ele, they can bring excellent support/utilities, but another profession can do that better. So they are excellent in speed run, but for now I never saw a Ranger in a record run.

ShakeyStorm.7180:

Actually it does what it needs to be done. Give it a try.

Ya like every possible build. I won’t comment in pvp, but for pve that not really good. It work ya, but not good.

Megastorm.6219:

I’ve been testing a few different styled builds as of late to see what holds up to the current meta we face as guardians. Spirits are wonky, but very fun at times. Shouts seem to be effective with:
0/1/6/6/1 GS/M/F

It’s got a lot of stability, condi cleanse, and heals surprisingly.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fVAQNAR5dlsApbotCxfH8DRBDRkjNYndOedxRAA-TJxHwADeCA62fAwFBoYZAA

There could be a number of changes made to this, but as it stands it works well as a bunker alternative. I just wanted to throw this out there for the masses that might be bored with other options at their disposal currently, and wanting something else to try.

Edit: As always I’m open to suggestions/changes, and criticism, guard up. Tested in ranked, and unranked with good success.

I use something similar. I prefer to keep Hold the Line over Save yourselves because of the higher uptime of protection/regen, while i don’t mind much about retal, might fury when my job is to bunker and I don’t really miss that vigor with my 2 sigils of energy. I only take contemplation of purity when there is necro or engineer in the other team. I take a guess because those are the two profession that can ruin my day with a lot of burst condition. If they are not in the other team, I probably won’t need contemplation and I’ll take 3 shouts.

Writ of the Merciful is interesting. that’s a lot of healing when you have 3 symbol. But I can’t leave my bubble on rez. I play almost only with a party so the bubble is really important.

Staff vs GS and Cleric vs Celestial are well known issues. I won’t go into that.

Carrion and Dire have use in WvW. Dire especially, carrion a bit less, but about in the same proportion as Valkyrie so, either cross them both or don’t cross neither.

‘’7/8 professions are utilized and traited 100% based on damage’‘, that’s just wrong. Ppl often switch trait for a bit more stealth on their thief (even record runs), Mesmer have their reflect build for focus which is often use, Elemenatlist S/X sacrifice personal dps for more might stacking, same with Phalanx Warrior. Now you can say that its dps support, but that’s still support. And those are all really powerful known build that are even use in speed run.

‘’5/8 professions have a stable spot in PvE-related parties’’ 5/8 profession have a place in record run dungeons. Not the same things. Engineer and Rangers have a spot in any PvE parties other than that. Anet fixed those profession (they are now 3rd and 4th best dps), its not their fault if part of the community still have a hard time keeping up.

‘’We have 8 dungeons and 24 dungeon paths (story instances excluded). Only 14 of those are being ran on daily basis.’’ Pls. The only path that people avoid are CM path 2, SE path 2, CoF path 3, TA Aether and Arah path 4. CM path 2 is super easy with a guild or with ppl that know what they are doing, SE is not that hard it’s just annoying, CoF path 3 is actually nice and easy but ppl still remember the old path, TA Aether is super nice but a bit long and Arah path 4 that’s normal, its the longest path of the game. Its not because pugs are afraid of paths that they are not used to do, that those paths are badly design, too hard or boring. A lot of ppl are avoiding some path only because they remember it when they were fresh level 80 in rare gear and inexperienced. Go back in those path and you’ll see that they are super easy now.

‘’Out of those 14 paths being run on daily basis, 7 (+/- 2) of those paths have bosses that don’t include stack and kill tactics.’’ Depend on what you define as stacking. Are you talking about staying in group close or using LOS and stack in a corner? Because the first one is the base of the game, while the second is OVERUSED by pugs because they don’t know better. Corner used to be a really good strategy because of FGS. Since the nerf, stacking in a corner is not the best tactics for MOST bosses, but pugs are comfortable with what they know and they will continue to stack even if that doesn’t bring nothing anymore. Just take a look as records run, most boss are killed where they are, they are not pulled in a corner or a wall.

hunnybun.1380:

Status when I left gw2:

Heavies are always accepted into pugs. Eles for FGS and exactly 1 time warp mesmer.
Necros / Thieves / Rangers / Engineers = instakick in pugs.

Solo PVE /Leveling:
Warriors are extremely OP in pve compared to the other classes due to high maintainable DPS / mobility / survivability

Is it worth coming back to this game and creating something besides a warrior?

Dungeon : All profession except Necro bring something in there. In records run you will see : Thief, Guardian, Warrior and Mesmer, but only one of each. Elementalist will fill the rest of the party usually 2 or 3 or them. Elementalist is the best dps against group and have the best burst with Ice Bow/Lighting Storm. Thief have the highest single target dps (if you exclude Ice Bow). Engineer and Ranger follow in dps, but are not part of records run because they are not TOP dps and don’t have the best utilities. Guardian, Warrior and Mesmer have decent to ordinary dps, but bring utilities that allow faster run.

WvW : Guardian, Warrior, Elementalist and Necro make up the spine or any zerg. Thief and Mesmer as gank/utilities/scout are also used in small numbers. Engineer and Ranger still have their place, but mostly in pugs zerg.

sPvP : Elementalist and Engineer are on top right now, but most profession are relatively balanced right now, no fat kit that everybody avoid in particular.

To answer your question. Warrior is not the hot profession right now. It’s still a good profession that usually have a place in top teams in most portion of the game, but its far from being the best profession in any.

Allelya.6830:

hunnybun.1380:

Status when I left gw2:

Necros / Thieves / Rangers / Engineers = instakick in pugs.

Which this needs to change.. I implore ANet to see this as a real problem and do something about it.

It did change. Only Necro are left behind in PvE. Still need more work, but they going in the right direction for that problem.

Like oxtred said, you could switch you build around to have 1 pt in honor for the additional vigor. Maybe you already do that, but try to use your save yourself for the vigor more than for the fury (i.e. don’t use it when you have full endurance or you waste some good vigor). There is still the wall trick, but I won’t comment on it since some could consider it a exploit. It’s still kitten first time you do it.

Your choice of server ONLY affect WvW and literally nothing else. Nothing in PvE, nothing in sPvP, not your guild, not your map, not your loging, nothing.

Tbh its suppose to affect which overflow you end up in, but party and guild have a FAR bigger impact so unless you are guildless or in a really small guild, it won’t affect you.

Up uptil tier 3 in WvW, your server won’t have any queue WvW map outside of some exception like on reset or during WvW season, so no problem there.

At tier 2, you start to see a big difference. For the first 2-3 hours of reset, most map are queues. Some are difficult to get into, but you should never have difficulty to find a map to play (at worst you gonna wait 15min). Outside of reset, you will see queue on map on a regular basis, but its usually fake queue or really short one, and its usually only on 1 or 2 map.

Never played in tier 1 so I won’t comment.

Don’t you guys think its because it was Christmas? I don’t know for everybody but a couple of ppl were out of the country in vacation, a big bunch were just almost never online because they had their kid all day, a couple of other were just doing just with friends and family.

Its not because shield is not an optimal choice that it will screw up his build. Yup focus will help a bit more, but its only a really small part and it will not make a noticeable different in most situation.

Black Box.9312:

If you want to use a crappy weapon, then fine. But if you go looking for builds anyone worth their salt is gonna tell you that you should ditch it for a focus. It just seems highly counter-intuitive to go around asking for a good build but then constraining it to your bad requirements. If you want to run a bad build, at least have the sense to make it yourself.

WoW dude. Maybe you need to learn the reason why ppl say that Shield is a crappy weapon BEFORE try to lecture ppl.

In that particular case shield won’t decrease the effectiveness of his build by much. Ya it will be of limited usefulness, but focus is not a big important part of a PvE build anyway. Like i already said, this won’t hurt its dps. He will only replace a blind/regen pull skill by some protection and lose a block. That will impact him, not really his party at all. Its like he’s asking for playing a staff which will hurt his team by decreasing his dps by a lot. A shield or a focus that doesn’t really matter for the party. Ya focus will give better utilities, but that’s all. IT WON’T IMPACT HIS PARTY MUCH IF AT ALL.

Guardian people don’t complain because its impossible to complete the daily or because its hard. Just to be clear, I don’t really care because I play PvP so my daily complete itself.

But I can understand ppl that complain about the new system. Daily use to be wide and general. There were 12 different achievement, usually 4 in WvW and 8 in PvE. Right there, its less different kind of PvE daily, which is where most ppl that complain play.

It also used to be pretty general. Do event in Tyria or Ascalon, do a fractal, etc. Now you have daily like Fractal 1-10 or Iron Marches Events, etc. At the end of the day, most ppl had their daily completed by simply playing the game in the part they wanted. Now, if you only play PvE you often have to direct yourself into some specific content that you didn’t necessary wanted to play that particular day.

You are right. Its relatively easy to complete and anyway its only for AP now. You get your reward by only login-in. But it still feel like the new daily are too specific (think someone who is doing fractal 50 each day and he need to do a fractal 10 for the daily) and have fewer option than it used to be (especially since we already saw 2 fractal daily the same day with the new system)

Ya go at the WvW vendor to save 10 laurels. There not really a infusion guild because its pretty strait forward, just search infusion on Wiki for the list. And it doesn’t really change anything a profession to another. It will change from build to build if you are in extreme min-maxing, but for the vast majority of player include hardcore, we don’t go into those detail.

Its simple. Do you plan on doing fractal at high level? If the answer is no, then take a utility infusion. If yes then do you plan on reaching level 30+ in less than a month or in month than a month. If its in more than a month still take the utility infusion and you’ll take a second amulet with Agony Resistance later. Its a good idea so you can switch then when you are in Fractal or outside.

LadyHawk.5319:

Similar question but different leveling path. I am new to the game as well. I have a lvl 44 ranger (and an 18 elementalist I am tinkering with). I have only quested in all the starter zones (did storyline quests, some crafting). Where to next? Have not done any dungeons. Not sure how easy it will be for a ranger (not a huntard – I do know how to play the class in a group lol) who is not lvl 80 to get into a group. But I am not sure what the best path is. I do not mind the journey of questing, esp. a new game. Should I quest all the 15-25 zones, etc or just complete zone totally now (e.g., my racial zone) and later complete all the others for points, bonuses, etc? What is the "normal’ path for a newbie? Thanx

Don’t overthink it. There is good or bad answer there. You can complete all started zone, explore and only do quest that looks fun, do pvp, do EotM, craft, etc Those are all equally good answer to level up. Some are quicker, but that shouldn’t be an issue for you until your 3rd or 4th character when you may want to optimize you leveling of alts. Until then, do what you prefer to enjoy the game while levelin up your character. There is normal path for a newbie, there several different path.

For dungeon it depend. Either contact the dungeon mentor guild (a sticky in dungeon forum if I remember) or ask a guildmate of yours to show you dungeon. If you don’t want or can’t do neither then you should maybe wait until you are level 80 before going into dungeon.

LOL ya don’t worry about that kind of attitude rabidsmiles. Just use the meta and switch the LB with a SB. You will lose a bit of burst, but its not like the meta use its LB that much (only at the start of the fight). You won’t have an optimal build, but you will still have decent dmg, dmg buff for the group and have fun. That’s what’s important.

My friend too is murdering stuff with unicorn, it’s always nice sight to see an unicorn pass next to my head when I don’t expect it in dungeon lol.

I asked that before the holidays but nobody gave me an answer. Where did Anet announced that episode 8 would be the end of season 2???? That the last update where we gonna have luminescent armor, but that’s it no? I don’t know, maybe there is something that I miss.

For me, its only gonna be the last update in silverwaste. My guess is that on january 20, we will have a new map, farther in Magguma waste.

Ya Acotje is right, sorry. If you go meta pve, precision runes is a waste. But it can drop quicly if you don’t use a meta build, so check that out depending on your trait, gears and skills.

Runes of the pack is surprisingly good in solo situation or in pvp. But you need to get hit for it to be good, which is something you try to avoid as much as possible normally. It also useless in group content where other profession can provide perma amount of fury without much problem. Again, it depend on your situation.

Amir.1570:

The skill floor isn’t even that low, you’ve never tried mace specs that chain CC while dps’ing.

You probably base your crap off of shoutbow and hambow, but I can’t really blame casual people who are scared to play the hard builds though.

It’s like saying Ele is braindead as a class because triple cantrips but you don’t even play the fresh air version of ele which is like probably the only thing that’s not braindead about ele.

Just a really dumb statement.

Why don’t you people try out DPS specs and see if you can even handle it? You people probably can’t, specially the ones calling Warrior low skill cap.

Wow, you woke up on the wrong side of the bed today? I’m don’t consider myself a casual tbh. I have 3,7k hours in the game, far from the highest, but still enough to not be consider a casual.

I didn’t say that all warrior build are easy build, neither did I said that I tried every build possible. All I’m saying is that overall Warrior have a lower skill ’’FLOOR’’, meaning that its a profession that is more accessible to new player. Ppl are able to do a decent job on a warrior even if they are not that good because it have more passive defense, its a more forgiving profession. That doesn’t mean that Warrior need no skill or that all build possible on warrior are easy mode.

Just calm down and breath man.

ErazorZ.5209:

Jerus.4350:

ErazorZ.5209:

Also to clarify, Dungeons do not earn money, 3 dungeons earn money. the rest doesnt.

You try to find an Arah P3 party as the same time you are trying to find a CoF1 party.

Strange, I get at least a gold from every dungeon run except story modes. Add in the materials and it’s quite a pretty penny. Now my rate of acquisition will depend on the dungeon but every single dungeon you make money.

Do you understand wasting time? If im working on getting an expensive item, wich would take me 2 months already to complete WITH farming, then doing the same dungeons for 4/5 months would give me about the same without it, If id do PvP for said item it could take me up 8 months.

Worst part is, 4/5 months of doing the SAME dungeons over and over again is a farm in itself wich is definatly not fun or immersive. If the dungeons where actually hard, and youd have some sort of checkpoints with the ‘end’ loot at each checkpoint dungeons would be a lot more fun, and lucrative. But its not they are easy, daily repeatable. and pretty stale if youve done em a few times.

I can take 2 jobs, work 16 hours per day and i’ll pay for my house way faster, so why don’t all ppl that can do that don’t? Ya some particular content will yield more gold per hour. Dungeon is pretty good for that, but crafting precursor yield even more and if you are good with the TP, that’s even better. Still, you don’t talk about play TP, you speak about doing dungeon. That’s already less money per hours, so your point don’t work since dungeon is not the ultimate way to gain gold in-game.

That said, its nitpicking on my a sorry. I understand your point and you are kind of right. The balance between challenge vs time vs reward is not that good in GW2. Fractal 50 is harder than CoF path 1 et 2, take more time, but give you less reward most of the time(unless you are lucky). But I don’t play the game to get the reward as soon as possible. I play the game because I enjoy it. When I want to play fractal I play fractal. When I want to play pvp, i play pvp. When I want to do a relax dungeon run to explain it to a new guildmate, I do that. Sometime I get into dungeon mode and want to complete dungeon as fast as I can for the fun of it. Other time I farm dungeon because I really want a particular skin. I do what I want and I end up by getting the skin i want eventually. I farmed more than I should have for my first legendary and didn’t have any fun in the end. Since then I made 4 more legendary, farmed when I wanted to and always had a great time, never forcing myself into something that I didn’t want.

coglin.1867:

Jerus.4350:

The beauty of editing is you can completely mislead people by omiting information in an attempt to twist the meaning.

What meaning is twisted? He was literally arguing that they were not a ranged weapon simply because you can shot gun them.

Jerus.4350:

And “Play how you want” I always thought referred to the fact that you have options on how to play, not that everything will be equal and accepted by everyone.

I don’t disagree. I was simply verifying that the statements exist in print. Obviously it is intended to be open to interpenetration, that is what marketing folks do.

Thanks for backing me up on that Jerus even if we don’t agree on some stuff. I’m not arguing litteraly that nade is a range weapon. I’m arguing figuratively that nade are not like every other range weapon. The risk vs reward don’t apply to them like it does with a bow for exemple. But we already discuss that. Why bring that back while quoting 6 words out of 2 lines just to discredit me on a totally new subject?

The worst is that you don’t even disagree with the point. Ya it exist and ya its left to interpretation (interpenetration lol, they should have change that to kitten don’t you think ~( ‘o’)~ ). But I still find it immature to read play how you want and expect that it mean that anything you could try would be optimal. You can play how you want and finish any content, not just in an optimal way because THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE to make in a game. I don’t expect ppl to expect the impossible.

ErazorZ.5209:

Sadly, i feel reading my thread, that allot of people already left and the pay2skin community is the only one left + newcomers, who will either leave, never see guildwars 2 the way it was, like the koreangrind or pay2skin.

You are right. I don’t see gw2 as a pay2skin, but in essence you are right. The game go in a direction, some ppl love it and stick to the game, other ppl don’t like it and quit the game.

That what happen to every mmo ever. Sorry for you, good for us, can’t say much more.

ErazorZ.5209:

But thats the essence of the problem isnt it. There is nothing fun to do wich is actually lucrative. And trust me ive played since Beta, i know tyria as a true fan all too well. But as ive stated, i am not going to waste my time looking for hidden events wich are stale not my level and boring either. I like lore, but if its the only ‘endgame’ where i can 1 shot every mob with no actuall rewards except the cassuall 1 blue. no thanks.

There is a lot of lucrative content and fun content in this game. And I have no problem play some less lucrative one just for the fun. My best experience in the game was the old fractal back in the days where you could reach level 80 and kittenty loots and SAB with almost no loots except some weird looking skins. Still had so much fun.

Maybe the game is just not right for you. Its not cool for you if you loved GW1, but hate GW2. That doesn’t mean that GW2 is a bad game with bad decision. Its just mean that they went on a different way and that don’t fix your needs. It happen, but in the end its only a game. You said that you enjoyed the game at lauch, so at least I suppose it was worth the initial buy.

Better go to another game than keep playing a game that you obviously hate. The game is in good shape, just no the one that YOU would like it. I heard that the new Dragon Age is awesome, a lot of my guildmate are trying these days.

ErazorZ.5209:

I have already talked about this ‘howtogetcashifwedontcashgrab’, if you mind reading the entire thread like i am, you would see exacly what im talking about.

And for the rest, no reall point to talk with you there since you arent even bothering.

Ya i saw that, i read you wall. There is different way to earn money for a MMO. Anet went one way with gw2 and I find it awesome. You prefer another way. In the end its Anet decision and so far it seem to have pay off for them, so too bad for you.

Its not a bad decision from them. Its a decision between different system that all have their market. Whatever system they would have choose, they would have ppl that would complain about it, but its been two years so get over it pls.

What a silly point, you speak like a little kid, sorry.

ErazorZ.5209:

Think about it if ALL the gemstore items where actuall ingame earnable skins with specific content to be matched for it. If all that DEVELOPMENT time was put into the game instead of the paywall.

I can imagine that. And i realise with that prospect, sadly, the game is pay2skin.

I’m imagining that right now, wait, wait. Oh right, there is nothing because no money coming in equal no content coming out. kitten reality, why can’t dev work for free, this is stupid, really PAY FOR SERVERS, what is this nonsence, next we gonna talk about mortgage and taxes for the office, tss.

ErazorZ.5209:

If you have any self respect, and you do a job you dont like to do. You quit it regardless. Better to be fired with a big bang then no? Instead of having no reall prospects on where the game is going so it will eventually fall into oblivion for everyone wich will get you fired anyways.

If you have any sense of responsibility, you gonna make sure you have a new job before quitting so your kids can have food on their table and a good education.

I play the content I want with my friend and I can get any skin I want if I make that skin my goal.

Some farm/grind are nice in small amount, you don’t have to that all days until you want to scream at your computer.

You don’t need to spend 1 dollar in the game if you don’t want.

Cheezy build are often one sided build that are easy to counter when you know how. It work because ppl are too bad or rage too quickly to understand what happen and what to do to counter it.

Oh I give up, this kid really.

KorbanDallas.7389:

All these people saying that 2.50 is nothing to a player who can afford a 2 week vacation in here make me laugh. I mean, does nobody work in a place that has holiday time you need to use? Heavens forbid that someone is scrounging to pay for a vacation for their family on top of paying their taxes and real world bills.

The thing is, that episode cost Anet money to make. Its content and content have a cost. Anet is a private company and they sell a product for profit, they don’t and neither should they care if you don’t have the money for the episode. The current system mean that hardcore player or ppl with money to spend can pay for most content, so Anet give them free to ppl that can’t pay for it. In return you play their game so it stay alive and keep those money cow into the game. That’s me, i’m one of those money cow that keep the game alive. I pay for the game I like so that content keep coming and I’m happy that some ppl can enjoy it without never putting any more money in it than that initial game. Ya it would be nice if you could miss some episode and still play them, but don’t you think its nice that ppl like me pay enough to keep content coming that other ppl can play for free? I think that’s pretty awesome already.

Here my list.

1) Combat Mechanic : This is the core gameplay, this is what model each second in this game and what make it fun and interesting for me.

2) Cooperation over Competition : With some exception the game push us to help each other and don’t punish us for doing so. We want to full maps to do certain event by taxing ppl in it, no stress or competition over mining node, we are not afraid of other ppl stealing our loots, there is no rage because a guardian take the roll on that nice light armor pieces that he don’t need anyway, etc. This reinforce the community in a positive way. Trolls are limited in the chat most of the time and can’t really ruin your gaming experience.

3) Scaling don’t make older content obsolete. 99% of my time is on a level 80, but I can still complete AC, do the Dredge Commissar or random quest without one shooting everything. The dev are also not limited in the place they can add new end game content. Nice to have the Triple Wurm at Sparky Fen and not limited to the limited amount of level 80 maps. This also spread ppl over several map and not only concentrate all the player base in end game maps.

4) Limited vertical progression. I leave the game each summer, like most of my guildmates and friends. Getting back in the game and still having the best game and being able to complete any content with anyone is a big reason why i’m still playing. It always feel like i’m going forward and I can’t continue my old goals, starts new ones. I’m not lock out of the current content because I miss on the last gear grind. This is one of the big reason why I keep getting back into the game even when I take a 3 months break.

5) Customization. This is a big part of any MMO and GW2 do it really good. I can put any skins on any stats, I can have any race as any profession and all that wihtout a difference in gameplay which is a big plus for me. I like that I can play a tiny asura warrior or a big clumsy thief charr. Add to that the large dye pools, the wardrobe, how easy it is to get transmutation charge, back item, etc

Carighan.6758:

Thaddeus.4891:

4) Not a deal breaker for me, but… They talked about that, but never delivered it except once with the grandmaster trait. Healing skills was a disaster.

Really? I thought except two issues in design they were good:

• Too few. If this had been one skill release, with 24-30 skills releasing a year, all good.
• Forced parity. Why release all 8 at the same time? That just hampers design. If the skills aren’t intentionally overpowered, power-disparity would be negligible.

Well they released 9 healing skills. Out of those, only 2 are really good, maybe another 2 are used from time to time. But nobody used the rest of the them, they are just terrible healing skill that don’t heal at all. I call that a bad attempt.

So ya if you want, you are right. There is way too few and for the skill, some of them were just bad in design.

Scholar if you can keep yourself at 90% of your hp for more than 50% of the time. (I think the real number is 60%, but i’m not sure).
Ranger with a mini if you can keep your hp.

You are right the skill floor is pretty low on this profession, but that’s on purpose. You can’t have all profession with a high skill floor. Not only that limit your diversity, but that will hurt your player base. Some ppl just can’t reach high skill floor and will lose interest in the game.

That said, the skill ceilling for the warrior is good. Not the highest, but it’s still really interesting. If warrior is too easy for you, there is other profession specifically designed to fill that role.

Jerus.4350:

Black Box.9312:

Kormeg.2469:

I know shields suck. Keep that in mind when posting please.

Well then what’s the purpose of asking for a build that uses it?

There’s optimizing overall then there’s optimizing within a certain scope. That’s why.

Do you grab a nomad’s shield with a Sigil of Hobbling because shield sucks? Or do you grab a Zerk shield with a good sigil because it’s smarter to do so?

That question just bugs me as it’s a mind frame that I think is wrong. Sometimes it’s just fun to do things a certain way even if it’s kinda dumb, doesn’t mean you shouldn’t want to do that thing the best you can.

Especially for a guardian shield. Its not like it will hurt the team. He will do exactly the same dps with a shield, the only difference for the team will be 1 less blind, but a bit more protection, which is not a bad trade. As long as he don’t destack mob with his shield, that change nothing for the rest of the party if he like to have a shield for the look. My friend like to play GS Axe/Axe on his warrior only to dual wield his mace. He usually do that when we have enough vulnerability anyway so the different is almost impossible to see and he have fun with two frostfang. Its not ideal, but with the meta build and ascended gear, who care about 1 little detail.

1) I have a WvW guild that does raid 3-5 times a week. Some night are slow, but other are just Epic

2) I ran dungeon a lot, but I spend time a bit everywhere in the game and most of my friend were never super into optimizing our runs. But after 2 years some are changing their tone and we are trying more and more new tricks. We have a blast even if some of those try end up badly some time. We still have a ton of fun and that give a breath of fresh air into dungeon for me. I also have the goal of soloing all path that I can, just don’t have the time much, so it go slowly.

3) Most of my friend were not in pvp either, but the slowly changing their mind. Now we can also have a team of 5 and I spent a lot more time in pvp trying to get all those champion title.

4) I always have a legendary or costly skin in process. Now i’m gearing up some obscur weapons for my main that I play rarely or adding some weapons to my 3rd-4th alt.

Depend of what you mean exactly by jack-of-all trades.

Engineer will be able to do a lot of things with the same build. You have access to a good number of blast and field from fire for mighting up to smoke for stealth to water for heal. You can do condi build, power build or hybrid build. Its also one of the Top profession in sPvP and WvW Roaming. It can do the job in WvW Zerg and PvE, but its not on top.

Elementalist have a more limited access to different stuff with one particular build, but its close second to engineer. Where is shine compare to the Engineer is that its a TOP profession in every aspect of the game. Its the only profession that’s worth taking more than once in dungeon, its the best profession with engineer in spvp right now, its a good roaming profession with extreme mobility and its one of the 4 main profession in any good WvW zerg guild.

But for both of these profession this come at a cost. They are some of the hardest profession to master if you want to reach their true potential.

There is not really a threahold for gearing up for dungeon. Some of them are not particular easy or smooth without good gear (mostly HotW, CoE and Arah), try to avoid those until you have a exotic armor. But for the others, no big problem. You can buy a complete exotic armor for about 5 gold. You could also do 3-4 runs of CoF (easiest dungeon) to get a complete set of rare armor level 70.

Exotic Armor : Several ways to get that. Dungeon Token is my favorite. You learn dungeon and get gold/loots. It will take between 20-23 paths to get your armor, or about 35 paths for armor + weapons. If you run for exemple CoF path 1 and 2 everyday (between 30-45min with pugs) that will take you a bit more than 2 weeks. You can buy that armor + weapons from the TP. This will be faster but a waste of gold in my opinion. You can have everything for between 10-40 gold depending on what you choose and do you order or buy directly. You can craft it as this will level up your crafting anyway so if you plan to create an ascended armor anyway, the additional cost of your exotic armor won’t be lost. You can buy an full exotic armor with 252k of karma at a temple, but keep in mind that you can’t salvage it latter if you want to change armor and karma is needed in large quantity if you want to have a legendary weapon. Finally, you can have armor + weapons for about 8.5 gold and 1400 badge of honor, but again you can’t salvage it.

Amulet : Go strait for the ascended. The cheapest is in WvW and you can buy it anytime

Rings : Go strait for the ascended. Really really cheap if you want to do fractals. If you dislike it, you can buy them with laurels, but only if you don’t want to do fractals as the price is not comparable.

Accessories : If you are in a guild that do guild mission on a regular basis, that’s the best way to get them ascended right away. It will take a month. If you don’t have a guild for that or don’t care about guild missions, you could craft or buy exotic on the TP. Ascended with laurel + glob are really expensive, but there is some collection and living story stuff that give you some but not much good PvE stats on those. Maybe exotic accessories would be better as you figure out what next for you.

Back Item : You can craft really cheap exotic back item, its probably the best step for new players. Ascended back item are usually a moderately hard item to get for new players. Some can cost several hundred gold to craft, the cheapest would be Mawdrey. It can take a long time to craft but most of the stuff you need to some little crafting everyday and some questing so its probably the back item that most casual or new player prefer.

coglin.1867:

I do not think melee and range means what you think it means.

A melee weapon set is one that is clearly designed to be used in melee range only. Bombs have literally no range, and therefor are by default, a melee weapon set.

Grenades have a range of up to 1500. simply because you can use them at a lesser range, does not change the fact that they are a ranged weapon set. Anyone one who directly claims “Nades are not a range weapon” is very misinformed in my opinion.

As well, I feel you have no comprehension of the profession as a whole if you are going to sit here and claim that landing grenade attacks are more difficult then landing bomb attacks.

Try to read the sentence in whole pls. So I have no comprehension of the profession as a whole when I say that landing grenade attack from range than bomb? Bomb you press you skill, grenade at range you click your skills and aim. At best (if the target don’t move) it’s almost exactly as difficult (which mean not at all), if the target move then ya of course landing grenade is harder than bomb. My guess is that you simply ready my sentence and tough I was simply saying that landing grenade was harder than bomb all the time, which is not what I said. Is it only a misunderstood between us or do think that landing grenade on a moving target have zero added difficulty?

Ya I know its a range weapon. I’m just saying that you can’t argue that this weapon should have less dmg than a melee simply because its a range weapon. Maybe I didn’t explained myself clearly. What I meant was : With nade in melee range the argument that melee weapons should have more dmg than range don’t work because the risk vs reward. The risk is as great with nade in melee as in any melee. Nade is different because when you get in range, it get harder to hit your target if he’s moving.

5) Completely agree. Whether or not ascended was good or bad is debatable, the way to introduced it was bad.

4) Not a deal breaker for me, but… They talked about that, but never delivered it except once with the grandmaster trait. Healing skills was a disaster.

3) I don’t mind that at all. I play the game and from time to time an update give me things to do with my friend. Its a free to play game, so not a bid deal for me. I wouldn’t mind more, but i don’t pay for it so I don’t expect that much.

2) NPE was terrible in general. Some nice things, but if it was like that when I started to play the game, I wouldn’t here today.

1) I understand why they have that policy, but true that i would like to know more information. There is some stuff that they talked about a year ago and its still lacking in the game.

There is nothing obligatory in the game. You can do what you want and that’s the beauty of the game.

- PvP : If you prefer doing pvp, there is great reward with the reward track and a correct amount of gold so you can just keep level up that way.

- EOTM : Its probably the fastest way to level up a character while playing the game. Crafting is faster, but some could argue that its not really playing the game. Not everybody love doing EOTM, personally I find it boring, but that’s just my opinion. It create new map when the first is full, so if you didn’t see anyone its probably because it was a new map, waiting a bit and ppl will start to flow in. Also ppl stick together in a major blob there, so spot the commander tag moving around in the map.

- Map Completion : Map completion is needed if you want to craft a legendary, otherwise only do it if you want. You could simply unlock the wp to move faster around the world and not complete the quest if you don’t like it. For me my first map completion was nice to do, exploring this world for the first time. But not everybody like that.

- Dungeon : They are an old group content that a big part of the community run for a long time now. This made them a difficult content to try out for new players. You can totally start doing dungeon around level 30-35, but a lot of ppl don’t want to carry ppl so low level with no experience. But there is way to ask ppl some help to show you how to play in dungeon and take their time. If you just join any group, that could be a unpleasant experience because player level 80 with at least a bit of experience is the norm in dungeon and ppl like speed and efficiency in their dungeon. Running with guildmate will help a lot and there is a guild that specifically help new player to learn dungeons. If you don’t want any stress, leveling to 80 before going into dungeon will help a lot. No need to rush into them.

- Exotic Armor and weapons if you want to buy it directly in the TP will cost between 10 and 35 gold depending on which stats you want. The most valuable and popular stats will cost you more. You can buy an armor and weapons with dungeon token, which is usually view as one of the best way to gear you in exotic even if it take more time.

Jerus.4350:

2 grenades -> 3 grenades is a 50% increase. 3 grenades -> 2 grenades is a 33% decrease.
Or am I crazy and bad at math today?

Ok you are right. Its a 50% increase in dmg and the third grenade count as 33% of your dps.

Wow people are obsess with that play how I want. I want to play an undead unicorn vomiting lava and giving poison with farts, do I whine about not being able to do that on the forum? No I keep that in private with my guildmate geez.

The whole concept of the Engineer is the kits. Why do you play engineer if you don’t want to use your kit. And if you use your nade+flamethrower with a rifle, then you have the 3rd best dps of the game. TADAM. Your welcome.

Pistol/Shield in pvp. AWESOME build. Your welcome.

Want to use pistol in PvE? Solo condi build. TADAM. Your welcome.

If you don’t want to do any of those, play as you want and don’t complain that its not the best setup possible.

Wait a sec. Where do you pull that 50%? Out of where? Oh wait.

No seriously, Grenadier boost the dmg by 33% on all your grenade, except your burst grenade barrage, that get boosted by 16%.

‘’no ranged weapon should out damage a melee weapon’’ Guardian sceptre on Lupi or Bloomhunger and Staff Ele say HELLO

Nades are not a range weapon if you use them in melee and if you use them in range, they won’t have as much dmg as bomb. You lose on boons and it’s harder to land all your nades.

I hate these – I don’t like ‘’insert thing’‘, pls nerf ’’insert thing – post.

Ranger its just fine guys. There was a huge ranger hate for the first two years of the game because it was really lacking. But since the last september path the ranger is in good shape.

PvE : Ranger was always in a correct spot in PvE. With spotter/frost spirit you could bring a good party buff and even if the dmg was lacking a good ranger was still able to help its team. Now with the 4th best dps of the game since september its in a really good place. But he’s in the same situation as engineer. They don’t have enough dps to beat Ele or Thief at that game, but don’t bring as much to the party as profession like guardian, mesmer or warrior so they are just not party of much record run. They are still great in speed run, just not record run, which is not an issue for 99% of the players.

sPvP : There is a couple of really good build for the ranger there. They lack the versatility of an engineer or elementalist so they are not usually part of the best team, but again, that’s not an issue for most players. Ranger can be a powerful profession in sPvP in unranked or ranked arena.

WvW roaming : That was their strongest point before and they are still good at it. Same old same old, they are not the best profession out there, but are you an elite player? No, then no bid deal, have fun, they will do the job, they are not lacking by that much that they will be unplayable.

WvW Zerg : They are not as bad as ppl thing there. You can be an interesting hybrid melee train/gank for a casual guild or just pug zerg. Most serious WvW guild won’t accept them, but other than that they do ok.

Its recurring with the Ranger. They excel nowhere, but they are never useless (now).